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  • Roberto Galoppini 11:04 am on October 13, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Communities, Mobile Firefox, OpenOffice: links for 13-10-2007 

    Rails – Open Source Communities are not created equal, learn more at Michael Korziasky blog about how Rails 2.0 is managed at the present stage.

    Dr Watson: who wrote Linux? – Dave Shields wrote an hilarious post I would recommend you to read if you look for some fun today.

    Lack of license fee draws UK firms to open source – Is Open Source gaining traction in UK?

    Mobile Firefox Announced -  Mike Schroepfer announced that Mobile Firefox is coming in a big way.

    My 4Q 2007 livre.nl contribution – A great post of Alex Fletcher on OpenOffice.

     

  • Bud Bruegger 11:14 am on October 12, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Identity Management: 12th Poorvo Group meeting, 18-19 October, Grosseto (Italy) 

    The Conference on Interoperable European Electronic Identities – organised by the Porvoo Group – will take place on the 18th and 19th of October in Grosseto.

    One of the main topics of the conference will be the issues of eID interoperability in which the city of Grosseto has been particularly active.

    The forcePoorvo Group logo

    I write this personal note after a journey of well more than three years in the land of electronic IDs (eIDs). It was a journey guided by ideal of simple and pragmatic solutions, helped and often even made possible by consistently engaging various communities who brought objectives in reach that would otherwise have been hopelessly beyond my resources, and evidently of open source both in use and in development.

    The Porvoo 12 meeting represents a culmination point of this journey, some kind of arrival, and therefore this note.

    More than three years ago I changed my hat by entering a local public administration—the Comune di Grosseto—and by diving into a completely unknown field of identity management with smartcards, access control, and all the rest. My task being to guide the administration to find a good and sustainable (thus open source) solution for identity management with the Italian eID card(s). And the environment was definitely challenging with a lot of information close to impossible to come by, initially no one to talk to, and being in a position of utter unimportance since eIDs are done by national governments, not local administrations.

    (More …)

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 7:36 am on October 11, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Jobs: Alfresco and Funambol look for a Community Manager 

    The Mobile Open Source company Funambol, and Alfresco, the Open Source alternative for Enterprise Content Management, are both currently looking for a community manager.

    Alfresco at the present stage has a Community Relations open position, while Funambol has to fill the Funambol Community Manager role.

    The forceOur Community Manager by JJay

    Apparently there are no many open positions like that, looking at opensourcexperts or similar sites I didn’t find any. Despite uncommon, I think it is really wise from both of them trying to empower their communities. I think also that the Funambol community and Alfresco’s one are quite different.

    Talking with Fabrizio Capobianco – Funambol CEO – while in Rome to join the VentureCamp, I happened to know about the Code Sniper and Phone Sniper programs. Besides those programs, Funambol’s architecture of participation welcomes small contributions, allowing individuals to more easily participate.
    I didn’t get a chance yet to speak with Matt Asay about Alfresco’s practical approach to collaboration, but reading the two job descriptions I see a difference. Alfresco is looking for a marketing-oriented role, reporting to the Chief Marketing Officer, while Funambol’s position seems more technical.

    Will you take the challenge?

    Technorati Tags: Open Source Jobs, Job offer, Alfresco, Funambol, MattAsay, FabrizioCapobianco, Community Manager

     

    • Ross Turk 10:01 pm on October 11, 2007 Permalink

      Hey Roberto!

      When I was Engineering Manager for SourceForge.net, I lobbied for the creation of a Community Manager position. They let me take that position, and it paid dividends almost immediately.

      Community management has become a very important part of open source businesses because it provides a way for us to understand how individual contributers work, what’s important to them, and what we can do to make them happy.

      Ross

    • Roberto Galoppini 10:01 am on October 12, 2007 Permalink

      Hi Ross,

      nice to hear back from you!

      I believe a position like yours is pretty unique, you’re a Community Manager taking care of lots of projects.

      Tell us something more about your job!

      Ciao,

      Roberto

    • Community manager freelance 7:48 pm on January 13, 2012 Permalink

      Thanks for sharing ! excuse my bad english i’m an fench guy. It is possible to take your post in order to translate it on my frnech blog? Thanks. Best regards

    • Roberto Galoppini 8:19 pm on January 17, 2012 Permalink

      Feel free to do it, please link to the original website for reference.

      Best,

      Roberto

  • Roberto Galoppini 7:31 am on October 9, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Commercial Open Source: What’s missing? 

    Richard Stallman recently wrote a long article entitled “Why “Open Source” misses the point of Free Software“, explaining why free software enthusiasts have to say “free software” rather than “open source“.

    Every Free Software activist knows very well this issue, and I did abide by the importance to stand for freedom for years when I was supporting the FSFE Italian chapter’s activities. Recognizing the importance of freedom and stand for it, doesn’t imply the need to not talk about open source, though. Here comes the reason of this post, let’s start with Richard’s words:

    These freedoms [the four ones] are vitally important. They are essential, not just for the individual users’ sake, but because they promote social solidarity—that is, sharing and cooperation.

    I think it is really important to stress the ultimate goal of free software, just as he clearly pointed out here: sharing and cooperation. Richard dislikes Lakhani and Wolf’s findings on the motivation of free software developers, because apparently only a fraction of them are motivated by the view that software should be free. In his opinion it happens because they surveyed the developers on a site that does not stress the importance of freedom. While I don’t know if he is right or not saying it, I think a better understanding of why firms cooperate on open source projects is important.
    An Italian research based upon 146 firms analyzed the role played by different classes of motivations (social, economic and technological) in determining the involvement of different groups of agents in Open Source activities. Here the conclusions:

    We find significant differences between the set of motivations of individuals and those of firms. In particular, firms emphasize economic and technological reasons for entering and contributing to Open Source and do not subscribe to many social motivations that are, by contrast, typical of individual programmers. While one might expect these differences, it is interesting to observe that the more pragmatic motivational profiles of firms are accepted in the Free Software community, provided firms comply with the rules of the community.

    So individual developers’ and firms’ motivations are inherently different in nature. Reading the variety of the answers comes out that the highest–ranking incentive for using Open Source software seems to be promoting innovation and emancipation from the price and licence policies of large software companies.

    Sequential Innovation is the reason to share and cooperate, as seen also in a study conducted on the linux-embedded vertical market, showing that averagely 53% of code is revealed. Participation to a technological club has beneficial effects on firms’ business, because they share risks and costs.

    Collaboration is an emerging pattern, and firms approaching software production in terms of sharing and cooperation are Free Software’s good friend. Commercial Open Source, as far as based on participation and fostering communities, is aimed at promoting just the same idea of freedom, no less.

    Happy hacking, share and share-alike!

    Technorati Tags: Free Software, RichardStallman, Commercial Open Source, Freedom

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 5:36 pm on October 5, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Cocoon getTogether 2007 

    Today had been held in Rome the sixth edition of the Cocoon getTogether 2007, an event exclusively dedicated to Apache Cocoon.

    The GetTogether included the all-collaborative hackathon two days long, as well as nice social activities around Rome and surroundings.

    I enjoyed just the very beginning of the programme. I had the chance to listen to the introduction given by my friend Gianugo and Arje Cahn, but also practical case histories thank to Francesco Chicchiriccò.

    My best compliments to Semeru for the organization, and to Gianugo that actually was a great host, over night as well! 😉

    Technorati Tags: Cocoon, Cocoon GetTogether, GianugoRabellino

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 11:53 am on October 3, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Business Barcamp: Venture Camp in Rome 06-10-2007 

    Next saturday in Rome will be held the VentureCamp is a BarCamp dedicated to Venture Capital.

    People from around the world will share experiences and needs, either from VCs or entrepreneurs perspectives. If you want to know more about Venture Capitals and Start-ups, or if you wish to tell your story join us at the John Cabot University, in Via della Lungara 233 in the very center of Rome.

    Richard C. Boly from the U.S. Embassy in Rome – Programme Manager of Partnership for growth – and Jaqueline Maggi from the John Cabot University are among organizers, as Fabio Scriptavolant Masetti who originally asked me to join months ago.

    Among Venture Capitalists, Arturo Artom from Your Truman Show, Luigi Amati from META Group, Giacomo Marini from Noventi.

    Among high tech enterprises, besides the candidates to become “gazelles”, I am happy to see that Fabrizio Capobianco from Funambol will join the event, and also old friends like Marco Rossi from Movenda on behalf of the First Generation Network.

    Media coverage seems also pretty good, Alessio Jacona for Blogs4biz, Amanda Lorenzani for blognation Italy, Livia Iacolare for Intruders TV and Leo Sorge for Più Blog just to name some of them.

    Last but not least, I see also many friends are coming over, among them Andrea Gumina, Nexttlab CEO (Andrea, take a moment to correct your URI), Nicola Mattina, Tara Kelly, Luca Sartoni, Antonio Pavolini, and Roldano De Persio.

    Technorati Tags: Startup, Venture Capital, Barcamp, AmandaLorenzani, NicolaMattina, FabioMasetti, MarcoRossi, FabrizioCapobianco, Movenda, Funambol

     

  • Davide Dozza 7:24 am on October 2, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    OpenOffice.org Conference 2007: some thoughts 

    The OpenOffice.org Conference 2007 was held in Barcelona, from the 19th to the 21th of September. People from all the world, employees and volunteers, attended the conference to learn about OpenOffice.org future.

    I returned myself a couple of days ago, and I wish to share here some thoughts about the final round table, actually one of the most important sessions.

    Round table participants were:

    • Louis Suarez-Potts, OpenOffice.org Community manager, who recently joined Sun Microsystems;
      .
    • Zaheda Bhorat, managing Open Source Programs at Google (formerly working at Sun),
      .
    • John McCreesh volunteer and OOo marketing Project leader;
      .
    • a representative of IBM (sorry, I don’t remember the name);
      .
    • Michael Bemmer, StarOffice manager at Sun Microsystems;
      .
    • Simon Phipps – Chief Open Source Officer at Sun Microsystems;
      .
    • Michael Meeks from Novell;
      .
    • Cai Yung Hu from RedFlag.

    While I was expecting to hear some news about the future of the project, the panel was basically a self celebrating presentation focused on download results and on the new project entries, namely IBM and RedFlag RedFlag.
    Now, unless we redefine a community just as a technological club open to firms, I wouldn’t call this group a community. After IBM and RedFlag joined the project, it is getting more and more difficult to call OOo an Open Source project managed by the community. it is becoming an Open Source project managed by big companies, “build contributed in collaboration with the community“.

    Barcelona guested also the Drupal Conference over those days, and it is worth to mention. Drupal is a CMS (Content Management System) released with GPL license and managed by a community. More than 400 people attended this conference, they paid 50 Euro, they mainly represented themselves or small firms and there were more than 40 sponsors.

    On the other hand, about 300 people attended the OOoConf without paying any fee, and only few people came from small firms or just for personal interest. Many were from Sun and Novell and sponsors were less than 15.

    Drupal and OOo are not comparable in term of code and users. There are different orders of magnitude between them. Nevertheless Drupal has more participation than OOo. Frankly I’d expect much more community participation from the biggest Open Source project in the world. Inside OOo I would like to view more hybridization among stake holders and the community . This would allow a better participation of single volunteers and small firms that are at the moment quite scarse. Louis said the next 12 months will be the most important of the entire project history. I definitively agree. And I hope they will be spent to make it really open because without a community the future is at risk.

    What is your opinion?

    Technorati Tags: OpenOffice, Open Source Community, LouisSuarezPotts, RedFlag, IBM, SimonPhipps, Novell, Sun

     

    • Simon Phipps 11:31 am on October 2, 2007 Permalink

      I didn’t think much of that panel either, David, but I think you need to reflect more deeply. A key question to ask is how many of the people at the Drupal event were actually developers working on the core code, and how many were end users?

      OOoCon had a large proportion of people who were directly involved in co-development of OpenOffice.org – the annual OOoCon provides them with a place to meet. OO.o is well sponsored, yes, which some people regard as a strength. Thus most of the individual developers who work on its code are employees of a sponsor company. End users of OpenOffice.org don’t really have to have special skills to use it so aren’t that motivated to attend. There are many end-user mini-conferences around the world during the year, arranged by the excellent OOo marketing community.

      By contrast, Drupal users will be mainly programmers and/or SysAdmins. They will be interested in hints and tips on usage, on meeting each other for learning and support. Drupal is also relatively new and there are plenty of people encountering it for the first time. I’d expect a Drupal event to be larger and to have a larger number of users attending.

      While I think the discussion of community building is a good think (indeed there was a session on that topic at OOoCon), I think your comparison is misplaced. Any technology whose main users are developers will produce the effect you describe when compared against OOo, regardless of the health of either community.

    • Michael Meeks 11:24 am on October 3, 2007 Permalink

      Unfortunately, attracting and retaining corporate developers to work on OO.o is really rather a difficult problem, though easier than attracting volunteers 🙂 Persuading Sun to change their community and ownership structures to improve things is also an almost impossible task.
      Some day, I hope we’ll see a meritocratically elected board of core contributors rounding up an OO.o conference packed with developers 🙂

    • Simon Phipps 5:09 pm on October 3, 2007 Permalink

      Has it been easier for Ximian Evolution, Michael?

    • JJS 6:47 pm on October 3, 2007 Permalink

      A community is what it is. Those who are interested in the project will join and participate based on their level of interest. Those who do not participate can offer opinions. But if the opinion simply amounts to, “I don’t like your community,” then the project members are likewise free to offer constructive criticism on that opinion.

      Later . . . Jim

    • Tor Lillqvist 11:02 am on October 5, 2007 Permalink

      Aren’t you linking to the wrong Red Flag company? The one that joined the OOo community is called something like “Red Flag CH2000” http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Beijing_Redflag_Chinese_2000_Software_Co.,_Ltd.(, while you link to Red Flag Linux, another entity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Flag_Linux

    • Davide Dozza 11:22 am on October 5, 2007 Permalink

      Simon, I definitively agree with you about developers and end-users. But this is exactly the question a I’m reflecting on.
      Why OOocon had a large proportion of people who were directly involved in co-development of OpenOffice.org and they come almost from Sun, IBM, etc and not from small and medium firms?
      I think OOo could be a great horizontal framework for services and software delivery on which firms could develop their business and contribute back. And moreover OOo could also be a place where volunteers contribute or a gym for people who want to get trained in a large and challenging project.
      But OOo doesn’t look like this. It seems that the major discussion topics are relating to keep satisfied the SUN requirements which are JCA, license, etc. instead to encourage external contributions and participation.
      It’s maybe time to transform StarDivision people from great developers to project managers oriented to the Community and to open the project?

    • Davide Dozza 11:36 am on October 5, 2007 Permalink

      Jim, first we have to define what kind of community we are talking about. Is it a free software community? Is it a software user community? Is it a community of software vendors? I think is very important because people can get puzzled about, as I’m becoming.
      In this way people will consciously join and participate to the project.

    • Roberto Galoppini 4:08 pm on October 5, 2007 Permalink

      You’re definitely right Tor, thank you!

    • Simon Phipps 10:50 pm on October 5, 2007 Permalink

      I just wrote a huge long answer and WP threw it away. Too upset to write it again, maybe next week.

  • Roberto Galoppini 4:05 pm on September 27, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source VoIP: VON Europe conference 

    VON Europe Autumn – a European event where people from all over the world talked about where IP communications is going in Europe – today guested the “Open Source VoIP” conference.

    The conference “Open Source VoIP, sustainability of OS project in the business sector” was aimed at discovering how open source VoIP applications are doing in the ICT market.
    Jon ‘Maddog’ Hall, President of the Linux International association, opened the conference talking about “Telephone, Free Software and Emerging Economies“, introducing the audience to the Free Software and raising some important questions about emerging economies.

    Jon Hall MaddogJon Hall Maddog by Pizel y Dixel

    Alfonso Fuggetta spoke about Open Source business models. He raised interesting issues related to false myths, like the software commoditization. He eventually ended saying that proprietary and open source firms are offering basically the same services, despite Jon and I were giving him evidence of the opposite.

    Greg Vance – Digium Sales Manager – brought the discussion on a practical ground talking about “Asterisk: an OS project that has become mainstream. What’s new“, telling us about the product and the company, included the new CEO and other open positions. I asked him about Digium’s revenue and I learned that 85% of their incomes gets from hardware, than training, services and double-licensing do the rest.

    The co-founder of the OpenSer project Bogdan-Andrei Iancu, who magicly appeared from nowhere when was his turn, talked about “The OpenSer: from Universities to industrial applications”. It amazed me to know how spread is the usage of the OpenSer, especially by universities but not limited to them.

    Diego Gosmar gave a speech entitled “Beyond the Asterisk World..what’s around“, giving a good picture of the Asterisk ecosystem, made by many local small firms delivering basic services (installation, configuration, etc). We agreed that there is a need for a better organized ecosystem, going beyond the Asterisk partnership program, may be through marketplaces or productizing services.

    A Questions&Answers session was held at the very end of the conference, resulting in questions about GPL licensing. As a matter of fact, the public is getting more and more conscious about open source applications and pose practical questions.

    Technorati Tags: Commercial Open Source, Open Source SIP, Open Source PBX, Asterisk, OpenSer , JonHallMaddog, AlfonsoFuggetta, Bogdan-Andrei Iancu, RobertoGaloppini

     

    • Randy Claines 6:07 pm on July 19, 2008 Permalink

      I use VMukti for my vopi open source needs and has been nominated for the CCA 2008.

      Haven’t used VMukti yet? Well I bet you have a need for it already. VMukti is a Free, innovative, multi-point total communications, collaboration and conferencing engine with built-in support for access to platform features through Personal Customizable Web Interface, Widgets for 3rd party websites, Desktops, and PSTN/ Mobile/ IP Phones. VMukti has been nominated for CCA 2008.

      Help VMukti get the support they need from the user community to continue developing such a great project. You can show your support by recognizing this software in the SourceForge.net 2008 Community Choice Awards. This recognition will help ensure that their software gets the attention it needs to continue to provide a great set of features to the software community.

      You can vote for the software on SourceForge.net by going here:

      http://www.vmukti.com/latest-news/vmukti-calls-on-community-to-win-prestigious-award.html

      Winning this award would mean big things for all the users at VMukti.

  • Roberto Galoppini 3:40 pm on September 26, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    OpenOffice.org Italian Association: invitation for the third Italian OpenOffice.org conference 

    The OpenOffice.org Italian Native-Lang Project (PLIO) invites you to the third Italian OpenOffice.org conference, that will be held in Florence on the 25th of October, by the QuiFree event.

    “Free Software, Open Standards  and case histories”
    The conference will cover OpenOffice.org state of the art, reporting feedbacks from the recent OpenOffice.org Conference held in Barcellona (videos available). Case histories will also be presented.

    PLIO volunteers will be happy to introduce you to OpenOffice.org 2.3, and you might get your chance to donate some money to PLIO no profit Association.

    If you want to join us, please fill in the registration module.

    Technorati Tags: OpenOffice, OpenOffice Italian Conference, PLIO, QuiFree

     

  • Roberto Galoppini 10:28 am on September 25, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source myths: Carlo Daffara asks your input on Groklaw 

    Carlo Daffara wrote an article, that is part of the project FLOSSMETRICS, answering the Tim O’Reilly‘s “Ten Myths about Open Source Software“, a keynote speech given in 1999 to an audience of Fortune 500 executives.
    Since those myths are still perceived as true at some extent, Carlo tried to provide some pragmatic answers and asks for your opinions on Groklaw, so far 318 comments are already listed!

    May I request your input? This article is part of our research in the EU project FLOSSMETRICS, where we are preparing a guide for helping small and medium-sized enterprises on the adoption of free/libre/open source software (FLOSS). As the first version of the guide will be ready soon, I would ask my fellow Groklawers for suggestions on what additional aspects you would like to see in the guide, as the results will be freely published under a CC-attribution-share-alike, allowing also for commercial use. We already have planned chapters on software selection, adoption methodologies (especially for the smaller companies), guidelines for contributing code to FLOSS projects, interaction with public administrations, and an initial selection of 50-60 interesting packages for SMEs. I welcome suggestions on additional topics, and of course criticisms and corrections.

    Technorati Tags: groklaw, open source myths, carlodaffara, flossmetrics

     

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